Françoise Adret

Françoise Adret (born 7 August 1920) is a French ballet dancer, teacher, choreographer, and company director. Her professional career, international in scope, albeit centered in France, spanned more than sixty years. She has been recognized as one of the most innovative creators of contemporary dance in western Europe.

Born in the city of Versailles, on the western edge of Paris, Françoise Adret began her dance training at an early age. In the 1930s she studied with the leading Franco-Russian teachers in Paris, including Madame Rousanne Sarkissian, Victor Gsovsky, Boris Kniasef, and Serge Lifar. In the late 1940s, following World War II, she had a modest career with the Paris Opera Ballet, making a notable appearance at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in 1948 in a principal role in Lifar's production of Le Pas d'Acier ("The Steel Step"), a modern ballet about Soviet factory workers set to a score in le style mécanique by Prokofiev. From Lifar, director of the Paris Opera Ballet from 1930 to 1944 and from 1947 to 1958, she learned much about company administration and direction. Under his guidance, she made her first choreography, entitled La Conjuration ("The Conspiracy"), in 1948. Based on a poem by René Char, it was set to music by Jacques Porte and had décor by Georges Braque.

Later that year, Adret left the Paris Opera Ballet and beame ballet mistress of Roland Petit's Ballets de Paris, touring with the company in western Europe. In 1951 she succeeded Darja Collin as director of the Ballet of the Netherlands Opera in Amsterdam while continuing to work with Petit's company, raising the technical level of the dancers in both companies. Working in Amsterdam until 1958, she also expanded the repertory of the Dutch company with classical ballets and a number of original choreographic works. In 1960, she became ballet mistress of the Ballet de l'Opéra de Nice and remained with that company until 1963, staging opera divertissements and modern ballets. She then spent a few years as an international guest choreographer, staging works for Le Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas in Paris, PACT/TRUK Ballet in Johannesburg, the Warsaw Opera Ballet, the Zagreb Opera Ballet, and the Harkness Ballet in New York City. While residing in Panama, she created the Ballet Nacional de Panamá.

...
Wikipedia